What is difference between public health care and private health care?
Public health care refers to the medical treatment patients receive at various public institutions such as public health agencies at state and local levels, hospitals, dispensaries, clinics, public safety agencies, human service and charity organizations, recreation organizations, philanthropic organizations etc. On the other hand, private health care refers to the personalized care for patients receive personal care home, where personal caregivers are especially employed for this job.
Private health care is generally delivered at a personal care home, where the patient is individually attended to. The cardinal difference between seeking care at a public healthcare center and a private center is that in a public healthcare agency, you have hordes of doctors attending to patients randomly and one does not really get the kind of personal attention from them that one desires so badly because of the unbelievably huge number of people that come seeking treatment and flood the entire place.
Whereas in personal care home, each patient is personally attended to by a doctor and the patient gets the kind of personal attention he wants. Because of this very reason, charges at a personalized care home are far higher as compared to the charges patients pay for in public healthcare agencies.
As far as public health care is concerned, doctors or personal caregivers working there attending to patients randomly and at short notice are given responsibilities. That include monitoring the health status to identify and solve community health problems, diagnosing and investigating health problems and hazards in the community, informing and educating and also empowering people about health issues, mobilizing community partnerships and action.
In order to identify and solve health related maladies, developing policies and medical plans to support individuals and community health efforts, enforcing laws and regulations focused at protecting health and ensuring safety, linking and interconnecting people in need of health services and assuring the provision of health care when unavailable otherwise, assuring adequate public and personal health care workplace, evaluating effectiveness and accessibility and quality of personal as well as population based services and putting in enough research to gain new insights and innovative solutions to various health problems.
Now if one talks about private health care delivered at a home or at some hospital or clinic running independently of the National Health Service (NHS), then the patient seeking the treatment has to pay for the charges or the fees payable as the NHS does not subsidize any of the costs for private healthcare. It must be taken note of the fact that private treatment centers are completely independent and patients seeking treatment have the right to be treated in the way they like provided they are willing to incur the charges applicable.
Charges generally differ at every care home center and vary from hospital to hospital and in case you happen to be a ‘cash buyer’, then you may want to shop around to find out which agency or treatment center actually offers the most desirable and affordable service. Again to the concerned, there may be a private wing in NHS hospitals at cheaper prices though generally a sitting or the service has to be pre-booked after checking for availability.
Why is it suggested that a personal home care be sought for caregiver services and be preferred over a public healthcare agency?
The reasons are many, the most obvious being that in personal home care, the attention given to the patient is personal and the caregiver sits with the patient personally, spends the requisite number of hours he is contractually obligated to with the patient and ensures he/she does not need anything specific and that things are good at his end. There are generally ‘NO’ waiting times in personal care and neither does the resident or patient or his family have to harbor any fears over infection rates and MRSA.
Residents get quick access to treatment, get to choose where and how they wish to get treated, at what time they would like to get treated, get to choose the specialist or the consultant or caregiver they are most comfortable getting treated by, get the option to have the treatment which may or may not even be available on the NHS and are made to feel ‘most’ comfortable within home like surroundings usually with an ensuite, meal options and no restrictions or visitations.
Caregivers employed with assisted living homes offering personal care are tasked with cooking meals for residents, helping them change clothes, helping them with bathing and washing tasks, and making sure they are not in need of anything else and are at their most comfortable. This is not the case with public healthcare agencies where the resident is simply lying down on a stretcher or a hospital bed in a ward where there are multiple patients and there are doctors checking on them randomly depending on where the requirement is coming from.
Patients in desperate need of personal care must always choose personal care-giving services over public healthcare centers. For if they happen to suffer from diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Dementia, it will genuinely become very difficult for them getting treated at a public healthcare agency where they hardly get time with a doctor or a health specialist and will perhaps even to the extent struggle with mobility.
Also, the facilities at private health caregiving centers are far superior and advanced than what one encounters at a public healthcare center. As age goes by and a patient starts becoming weaker, he is always going to find it hard to adjust to a place where comfort lacks seriously.